Can I save the music data on an audio CD?

[Jorj]

Hi! I hope I am posting this in the right place. I would like to ask if it is possible to save the music data on a cd when burning it with sonicstage. I have version 4.3 on windows ultimate 7. Thanx

[sfbp]

Welcome to the forums!

Unfortunately your question is so complex (you have asked about 6 and mixed up the various pieces of the 6 questions and made them sound like a single question) we had better start slowly. SonicStage+Computer+MD is such a powerful combination you can do almost anything (except,except,except...)

So:

a. what are you trying to achieve (where will your music end up) and in what format (do you need to play it on a walkman, or in the car, or ....) ?

b. where is your music right now? (what disk)

c. what format is it in?

d. what cables/connectors do you have to the minidisc? (assuming there is an MD somewhere in this question because this is a Minidisc discussion forum).

If you don't have the manuals to the minidisc (which are quite compendious!) the link to many of them is here: http://www.minidisc.org/equipment_browser.html

If you *still* don't have them after that, Sony's site is http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/select-system.pl?PRODTYPE=68

You'll need to enter your model somehow over on the right.

Good luck! We'll try to help as best we can.

[Jorj]

My question has to do with sonicstage so I assumed (probably wrongly) that I should post it here. Maybe I should have posted it at the software section. Anyway, if you may know, I use sonicstage 4.3 also to burn audio cds from my (sonicstage) library (mostly mp3s). But I get audio cds withought the music data (like song title, artist etc). So I was wondering if I can burn the cds (using always sonicstage) and save title and artist and not just track1,2... I hope this time I made myself clear. Thanx a lot

[sfbp]

It depends whether you are trying to transfer MP3s so that they can be played in the way that most MP3 CD's get played. There are (at least) three different ways you can get that music on the disk:

1. As MP3 unchanged (this doesn't really need SonicStage at all) - just use Nero or any other program that burns CD ROMs. In this case the music tracks are seen as a collection of files, and whether the titles are read is a function of a. the burning software b. the device on which the CD is played back. SonicStage is able to burn such a CD and there should be no problem with missing titles.

2. As a 100% regular CD with one CD-track per song. This requires conversion from MP3 to PCM. Again, you need a program that writes the CD-Text (like Nero that I mentioned in 1a. above). SonicStage will not do it, though it will make a CD, which is what you have discovered. It's kind of wasteful to write MP3's converting them to regular audio tracks, because the file size gets multiplied up with no increase in quality. The only reason for doing this would be so that you can make a CD to play where somewhere that you or the receiver of the CD cannot play MP3's but only "ordinary" music CDs.

3. As an Atrac CD. In this case SonicStage definitely DOES do it. However the catch is that the songs have to be in ATRAC format to begin with. This is possible but might mean an effective loss of quality. You would also have to tell the program what bit rate to write the files to the Atrac CD (SonicStage will ask you!). In addition you need something that will play it back (and it doesn't on a PC), namely either an Atrac-compatible Sony Walkman, or an AtracCD-compatible Sony head unit (for the car). No one else except Sony makes a device that will play these CD's, and the format is being withdrawn, with the death of Atrac.

Maybe you haven't figured out how to choose between options 1, 2 and 3 within SonicStage? When you press the button marked "Transfer" on the top of the screen (vMusic Source -- My Library -- Transferv) there should be three options - like this

Create an Audio CD

Create an Atrac CD

Create an MP3 CD

But if you want CD-Text on a regular CD, it can't be done. Try getting a copy of Nero. However all this makes me wonder if you simply need option 1.

[Jorj]

It depends whether you are trying to transfer MP3s so that they can be played in the way that most MP3 CD's get played. There are (at least) three different ways you can get that music on the disk:

1. As MP3 unchanged (this doesn't really need SonicStage at all) - just use Nero or any other program that burns CD ROMs. In this case the music tracks are seen as a collection of files, and whether the titles are read is a function of a. the burning software b. the device on which the CD is played back. SonicStage is able to burn such a CD and there should be no problem with missing titles.

2. As a 100% regular CD with one CD-track per song. This requires conversion from MP3 to PCM. Again, you need a program that writes the CD-Text (like Nero that I mentioned in 1a. above). SonicStage will not do it, though it will make a CD, which is what you have discovered. It's kind of wasteful to write MP3's converting them to regular audio tracks, because the file size gets multiplied up with no increase in quality. The only reason for doing this would be so that you can make a CD to play where somewhere that you or the receiver of the CD cannot play MP3's but only "ordinary" music CDs.

3. As an Atrac CD. In this case SonicStage definitely DOES do it. However the catch is that the songs have to be in ATRAC format to begin with. This is possible but might mean an effective loss of quality. You would also have to tell the program what bit rate to write the files to the Atrac CD (SonicStage will ask you!). In addition you need something that will play it back (and it doesn't on a PC), namely either an Atrac-compatible Sony Walkman, or an AtracCD-compatible Sony head unit (for the car). No one else except Sony makes a device that will play these CD's, and the format is being withdrawn, with the death of Atrac.

Maybe you haven't figured out how to choose between options 1, 2 and 3 within SonicStage? When you press the button marked "Transfer" on the top of the screen (vMusic Source -- My Library -- Transferv) there should be three options - like this

Create an Audio CD

Create an Atrac CD

Create an MP3 CD

But if you want CD-Text on a regular CD, it can't be done. Try getting a copy of Nero. However all this makes me wonder if you simply need option 1.

Actually it was No2 I needed to know. It's a same it can't be done. I wonder if it's the software. Anyway, thank you very much for the information. I spend quite some time trying to figure it out.

[sfbp]

Actually it was No2 I needed to know. It's a same it can't be done. I wonder if it's the software. Anyway, thank you very much for the information. I spend quite some time trying to figure it out.

Actually Avrin claims (in another thread) that it should work.

I fell totally on my face after posting the last response, as I couldn't make *anything* work. Perhaps something messed up, but I know I have only seen CD Text on i) Sony combo CD-MD decks and ii) on disks made with Nero. That's very very far from saying that there's no other way. But I thought the one time I tried to make a regular CD disk with SonicStage that the titles were discarded.

[KJ_Palmer]

Actually Avrin claims (in another thread) that it should work.

I fell totally on my face after posting the last response, as I couldn't make *anything* work. Perhaps something messed up, but I know I have only seen CD Text on i) Sony combo CD-MD decks and ii) on disks made with Nero. That's very very far from saying that there's no other way. But I thought the one time I tried to make a regular CD disk with SonicStage that the titles were discarded.

Not sure why you're having problems burning Audio CD's with CD Text, Stephen, but Sonicstage definitely can do it, as I've verified just now. It copied the Sonicstage titles to each track, and they display fine on both my Sony CMT-M333NT and Marantz CD6003. I've just installed Avrin's Ultimate SS4.3 installer on a fresh laptop, maybe that's helped.

[Jorj]

I will try to install Ultimate SS4.3. It's the release 2, right? If I need the SonicStage patch 4.3.02 where can I download it from?

[Jorj]

Up

Since my last post I have installed Avrin's Ultimate SS4.3 and I made some interesting observations. For example today I copied an original cd using Sonicstage. I was not able again to see the song titles when I opened it (Computer/DVD RW Drive(F:)/open). I was not also able to see them when I played it with windows media player nor with mp classic. But then when I played it with VLC all the titles appeared in the playlist! So, it is not my DVD drive nor Sonicstage the only reason for the absence of music info, but a kind of incompatibility between different combinations of players, writers and burning software. The same cd I burned with nero and the titles appeared on windows media player, but not when I opened it (without playing it) in my Computer (as above) . I wonder sometimes about this kind of "problems" when the technology is already there but doesn't cover all cases for no obvious reason(s).